Conceived Without Sin (49 page)

"Uh, on your
route, Georges on Lorain. Lousy food, lousy service, cheap prices," he called back.

She laughed. She had a deep voice for her size. A little like Donna's. Buzz watched her carefully. Like many female UPS drivers, she walked a bit like a man.

Maybe she's a lesbian.

She smiled at him, and his lonely heart melted.

"See you there?"

"Sure," he said as he started up the engine, and began to pull out
carefully. There was less than six inches between the twenty-odd package cars lined up in two facing rows with conveyor belts behind them. The rounded cabs of the trucks allowed just enough room for a big man like Buzz to squeeze through. It was dark. It was always dark near the trucks.

UPS didn't believe in wasting valuable resources on superfluous lightbulbs.

+  +  +

Georges Kitchen was out
of Buzz's way that day, so he ran to every doorway to buy clicks (UPS measured time not in sixty minutes per hour, but in one hundred 'clicks' per hour–it was more efficient).

At the doorstep of the last house, he laughed after he read aloud the two words on the welcome mat: "Go Away."

He waited another thirty precious clicks for Maxine to show up at Georges.

For some reason, he was the only other
driver there on this day. Usually there were three or four. Maxine slid across from him on a plastic-coated bench. There were fake green plants hanging on the walls of their booth.

Buzz splurged and ordered a hamburger, a bowl of soup, and the inevitable Pepsi with a lemon twist.

"Let me buy you lunch on your first day in Norman's section," he offered even though he couldn't afford it.

"I hear
he's a real ball-buster," she said. She was direct.

Buzz snorted. "Don't let me get started on Norm. Did you know that Porcine means pig-like?"

She laughed heartily. "You're pulling my leg?"

He shook his head slowly. He hadn't felt this good in, well, a long time.

"You wear a Miraculous Medal," he said, pulling his own out from under his shirt.

She smiled. He noticed a gap between her front teeth
for the first time.
Well, nobody's perfect.

"Yeah, you too, eh? I got mine in Fatima."

"I've heard about that place. Is it for real?"
I've hit the jackpot!
Buzz thought wildly.

She told him all about it. She had been dragged there by her mother, who was very devout. She said she enjoyed the place and went to confession there for the first time in years and years.

Buzz soaked up every word; he
thanked God it was a Monday. There was a good chance that they would both have the same routes for the rest of the week.

+  +  +

As luck would have it, they did have the same routes. They met for lunch Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Buzz had little trouble showing up for work on time that week.

But what kind of luck was it?

It turned out that Maxine lived alone in Parma in a house her
widowed grandfather willed to her upon his death a year before. She had a brother in the Navy. Her parents lived in Parma Heights.

She liked to talk, and Buzz found himself finding out all about her. He was disappointed that her Catholic faith did not appear too deeply entrenched. But she was going to Mass on Sunday now and said she prayed the Rosary on occasion since Fatima.

She had played softball
for Parma High School; he liked that. She didn't play basketball.

On the rare instances when she asked him about his past, he hedged on details, but did tell her that he went to Notre Dame. She seemed to like that.

He convinced himself that she was on her way into the faith, not on the way out. He wondered if she was the one for him. He decided that his hateful February was over, and that he wanted
to find out for certain. During the Friday lunch he summoned the courage to invite her to go to the movies with him that evening.

"You know that's against the rules," she told him. "We could both lose our jobs." UPS workers were not allowed to date each other.

"Others do it. Who's gonna find out?" he countered with an impish smile, a new sparkle beneath his half-closed eyelids.

She smiled.

He
was growing to enjoy that smile, despite the gap.

+  +  +

They saw a terrible Stallone movie. Afterwards, they ended up at her place. He immediately noticed that the place was still furnished with her dead grandparents' furniture. There were patches and holes in the screened porch off the kitchen.

She lead him to the kitchen, where she showed him pictures of her brother and parents on the refrigerator
before opening the door.

The place had a vague prune smell to it.

"Beer?" she asked.

"Naw," he said.
I'm an alcoholic. Tell her!

But he didn't.

"Come on," she urged.

"Naw. I've got a bit of a headache from the movie," he lied uncharacteristically. Buzz normally hated white lies. After months of telling his friends he felt good when he didn't, they were becoming a habit.

"Suit yourself," she said.

He followed her into the tiny living room. There was a black and white television on a cheap cart, and a grey checkered blanket over the couch; it sagged when they sat down on it.

She took a gulp of her beer, and offered it to him again.

He shook his head. He was not tempted in the least.

"Well," she said with finality.

He felt like a high school kid.
What do we do next?

"Tell me about Fatima again."

"It was great," she said, and leaned toward him. She snuggled her nose into his ear.

Buzz felt the dingy floral-patterned walls closing in on him.
She's going to kiss me…

Do you want to kiss her?

She reached over and turned off the light. The faded yellow and gray shade had a black hole in it where a lightbulb had burned into it, leaving crusty brown flakes near the edges.

"Hey Buzz," she cooed.
"You're kinda cute."

She reached her hand down. He looked at the electrical outlet on the opposite wall, where the television was plugged in. There was no grounding hole in the old, faded beige-plastic outlet. The little socket guy was a mute, with no mouth to cry out.

He looked back at her hair. In the darkened room, it was a greasy, brackish color.

"Bye!" he practically yelled, jumping up.

"What the–" she hissed, falling into the cushions. The guy moved like a cat. "Where you goin–"

"Gotta go!"

"Where?"

"I uh, have to, uh, return a video. Sorry."

He ran through the kitchen, out the door, and to his car. He fumbled for the keys. His hands shook as he jammed the key into the hole.

Please don't let her chase me out here. What a fool you are, Buzz Woodward! Please God, don't let her
chase me out here!

God answered this small prayer.

How am I going to face her on Monday?
he thought five minutes later, driving carefully up 150th Street at twenty-five miles per hour. Every UPS driver knew that 150th was crawling with Parma cops day and night.

Maxine! I knew that name sucked.

So it turned out that his luck was bad after all.

6

That evening, as Donna prayed almost exclusively
for him during her shift before the Blessed Sacrament, Buzz won a thousand battles, and lost only one.

Images invaded his imagination from the dark recesses of his past.

The first image was Maxine's hand, reaching down.

He swatted it back into his memory bank.

The next image was from a girl he was with in a dark basement during high school. He shooed it away.

The next, women from dusky saloons
during his drunken days. He waved at them.

Cascading down, then bilging upward, pictures from dirty personal postcards buzzed into his head, as if carried on a black-graced wind exhaled from a leviathan beneath a frozen ocean.

He tried to pray, a veteran of these wars. They were the reason he had been missing daily Mass. Buzz was not the type to receive Communion if he was not in a state of grace.

Not again,
he despaired, wondering how long he could hold out.

The Maxines burst through the holes in the screen of his muttered Our Fathers; he sat up in bed; he looked at the clock.

Too late to rent a video.

Sometimes this distracted him. Sometimes, if he forgot to ask Saint Anthony to help him choose the right movie, it made things worse. Tomorrow was Saturday. He could stay up all night watching
videos and not have to worry about Norman the Pig standing by the click-clock…

Then
she
came, humming her cabaret hymn. The one from Eddy Street in South Bend. The one from Notre Dame. The one with the snake.

Kelly Pauling, carrying a huge white photo album filled with color-coded memories of their many illicit waltzes.

He had not seen her in a long time.

Think of Donna! Think of Sandi! Think
of the Blessed Mother.

Why do I have to wait for grace?

Good faces turned into bad, and nightgowns fell to the floor…and the snake hissed, slithering into his bed, escorted by a vanguard cloud of fat, black flies.

He didn't waste time. He fell, his soul pierced by many swords from his own past…

+  +  +

He turned his head. He muttered an act of contrition, fearing death, yet longing for it, too,
for he was alone now, the sirens long gone, the flies and raspy forked tongue leaving him alone in the pool of despair.

Alone.

His victory at Maxine's completely erased from his memory, a page now in the closed book of his many pasts.

Please God, help me find a priest tomorrow.

He had forgotten to pray his Rosary.

That's two days in a row. No wonder.

Feeling too soul-sick to leave his bed to get
his beads on the dresser, he began the Rosary again and again, repeating
I believe in one God
over and over, unable to finish the first line, as if an enormous cold anvil had been placed on his being…or perhaps a giant broadsword had pinned him to the coil of wet, sandy earth.

Chapter Twenty

1

Buzz Woodward didn't remember falling asleep on the night of the flies…

…he dreamed he was floating on an ocean in a warm womb. His mother's womb. His thumb was in his mouth. When he pulled it out and looked at it, he noticed with amazement that he could see the veins in his fingers and hand, illuminated by an unseen light.

I'm unborn,
he told himself, accepting the fact without
question in that strange, awfully logical way of dreams.

I am in my mother. I'm alive. I'm small. I'm alive. I am in my mother.

He longed to see the world outside, despite his comfort, because he knew there were people waiting for him there.

Who is waiting?

The baptized,
his Father spoke in his heart.
Come to the water.

But I like this water. I don't remember my mother. Will I get to meet her
among the baptized?

Come to the water,
the Father answered, as if this phrase explained everything about his mother.
And I will give you a new mother.

Why do I need a new mother? I like
this
mother.

The child felt the Father's disappointment.

Eve cannot be your mother. You must be born from the womb of the New Eve, the one who is conceived without sin. To be the brother of her son, you must suffer.

On the horizon of the ocean, a sliver of soft light appeared.

Why must I suffer? I'm afraid.

The Father did not answer.

Father? Are you there?

Buzz's fetal heart began to pound quickly.

All my sons must suffer. I have taken your hand and put it to the plow. Do not look back. You must suffer for another. When your labors are completed, my Son will be waiting for you at the well. The water He will
give you is from a fountain that will never run dry…

The Father's voice faded.

Buzz heard his own adult voice from beyond the womb, praying:
Give me a plow to put my hand to…

Colors that were not black or brown or gray came over the horizon to the east and Buzz fell into another dream…

2

He woke up past noon. He remembered the lost battle of the night before. He buried his head beneath his pillow,
to keep the light streaming through his window away from his eyes; he tried to fall back to sleep.

He did.

He woke up after two. He did not shower or shave, and after a trip to the refrigerator, upon finding no orange juice, drank a glass of Pepsi using an unclean glass from the night before.

He avoided prayer and memories; he sat before the television. The NCAA games were on.

Later, the phone
rang. He heard Sam leave a friendly message on the answering machine, but did not pick up the phone.

Bill White called during halftime of the second game of the doubleheader. Buzz did not pick up the phone.

He stared blankly at the screen, unable to concentrate on the game, the anvil still on his shoulders.

At seven, he realized that he had not changed out of his pajamas.

Mark Johnson called at
eight; Buzz picked up the phone in the kitchen without thinking, out of old habit, regretting his lapse from disciplined sloth.

"Buzz, what are you doing tonight?"

"Nothing much. I'm watching March Madness." Buzz tried to inject normality into his tone.

"Don't follow that much. Hey, wanna come over and wrestle? You wanted lessons–"

"Uh, gee, thanks, Mark. Not tonight. I'm dog tired. I just jogged
a few miles…"

"Oh. Great. It's good to exercise. Lifts the spirit, doesn't it?"

"Sure does! I feel great!"
I hope I'm not laying it on too thick.

There was a pause on the other end. "Sure you don't wanna drop by? The girls would love to see ya. Or I could come over there if you like."

Mark wasn't buying Buzz's line.

You can't snow an FBI guy,
Buzz thought glumly, feeling like trash for lying to
Mark and getting caught in the lie.

"I really can't. Not today. I've got a few things to do around here."
Like watch television all night.

"Sure?"

"Yeah. Thanks. Some other time. Thanks Mark. Say hi to Maggie for me."

"I will. Give me a call, Buzz. Anytime. Check that. I'm flying to Atlantic City tomorrow for a stupid conference. I'll be gone for a week. Call me after. Or get the number for me
in Atlantic City from Maggie."

"Yeah, sure, thanks."

Buzz hung up the phone.

He stared at the ceiling.

I'm a liar, too.

The lying was like slipping into an old, well-worn pair of Levis that he had found in the back of a closet.

I'm back! Bigger and better than ever before!

An old thirst tickled his palette as it did a hundred times on every day.

And after years of struggle, years of fighting,
years of vainly searching for a home, he gave up struggling, fighting, and searching.

He was giving up. The giving up came so fast, so quickly, that he almost missed it.

He looked around the room. He saw his green leather chair. The cut-out Thunderbird collage on the wall. The cast iron skillet. The books on the shelves. It was the same.

He was different. He chose it.

He turned his head quickly.
The anvil was still there, as heavy as ever, but now at least, Buzz had a false hope that it would be lifted soon.

He noticed the socket-man, the one who lived in the wall next to his favorite green chair.

"Nooooo!"
the little guy pleaded.

"Sorry, man," Buzz said out loud. "I'm tired of you, too. I'm tired of waiting for–things that never come. Now shut up and leave me alone. You're not a little
man. You're a friggin' three-pronged electrical socket."

He found an empty glass on the counter, and whipped it across the room. It shattered on the socket, leaving shards of glass on the wooden floor.

Buzz walked over the glass to his bedroom, oblivious to the sliver that jammed into his heel.

Achilles heel,
he thought disjointedly.

Say a prayer?
a little voice suggested bleakly.

What for?
he
answered himself confidently.
I'm a drunk. I'm a liar. I'm a sinner. I'm tired.

It all made perfect sense to a madman.

Come to the water,
an evil voice proposed.

Maybe I will,
Buzz answered, feeling stronger by the second.

He missed feeling strong. He was tired of weakness. He was tired of being tired when he woke up in the morning.

Maybe I will.

3

Buzz showered, then shaved carefully. He slipped
on a pair of jeans, his Scaps T-shirt–this gave him a chuckle–his Stan Smiths, no socks, and grabbed his wallet, checking to make sure his one credit card was still tucked safely within.

Let's see; how about…yeah, that's the place.

Buzz jumbled down the steps of his apartment, walked purposefully to his car, and paused over the rust marks.

Looks like a shore car. All corroded by salty ocean air.

He filed that notion away in a special file in his head.

He drove to the establishment he had in mind. It was only a few minutes away. He smiled at the blinking red neon light in the window.

High Life.

That's the ticket.

He waited for a moment. Perhaps some angel would appear to ward him off. Or he would be struck with the sweats, a paralyzing fear. Maybe his hand would refuse to move toward the
handle of the creaky door of the piece-of-crap car.

Surely, God would make this whole project a tad bit harder to pull off.

Nope. Nothing.

He opened the door of the Festiva, skipped to the entrance of the establishment, then pulled the brass handle with a whirl. He felt light on his feet.

Piece of cake.

Come to the water,
the voice suggested, far away, another siren song.

Be just a minute,
the
madman replied.

He took a stool. It was sufficiently dark. The lacquer on the long counter was pleasantly thick.

He fished a cigarette out of his pocket, and popped his Zippo. There was no one else in the place except the man behind the counter. A new guy.

Buzz took a long drag on his smoke.

"What'll it be?" the bartender asked.

Buzz briefly thought of George Bailey in
It's a Wonderful Life,
in
the famous bar scene. He rejected the idea of ordering Bailey's Irish Cream.
Too sweet.

"Let's start with a shot of Jack."

He flipped his credit card on the counter.

"One Jack Daniels coming right up," the bartender confirmed, turning away.

The years between his last drink and his next drink seemed only an interlude to him now–a pause between scenes while watching a video. The bartender returned
with the drink.

Well at least you were always a happy drunk,
Buzz consoled himself.
You gotta give yourself that much.

Happiness. The notion was intoxicating.

There was a March Madness game on the television suspended over the other end of the bar. The barkeep was drying a glass with a rag, watching.

On the juke, Bruce Springsteen sang an appropriate, tawdry, self-absorbed tune about the most
important thing in the world to him–Bruce Springsteen–in the background.

That night we went down to the river, and into the river we dived…

Such familiar little sights and sounds.

The sounds of home.

Buzz raised his shot glass. Still waiting for the divine intervention that he knew, just knew, was not going to come.

If you down it,
Buzz told himself, dipping a mental pen into ink, preparing to
sign a treaty that would call off the dog-demons that haunted him,
you've got no one else to blame but yourself.

Inside him, a little boy, the one conceived without sin, the one that Donna, Ellie, Sam, Bill, and Mark loved, struggled in a darkened womb.

Fair enough. And now, a toast.

"Cut it down. Cut it all down."

4

A few blocks away, Sam had stayed late at Edwards & Associates working on the
new bank contract. Ellie had come by with Chinese takeout.

They ate at his desk.

"What's that?" Ellie pointed to the bookcase.

"What's what?" He looked up from his spreadsheet and noodles.

She put her box of chow mein down and walked across the room.

"Oh, it's a Miraculous Medal!" she exclaimed.

"Yes. Donna gave that to me, oh, it must have been a year ago." For the first time he remembered that
Mark Johnson had noticed the same medal when they met.
Signal grace?
"Before we knew Mark."

"Really?"

He smiled. "Really. I have no idea what to do with it."

Ellie frowned.

"Sam Fisk?" Her voice dropped with exasperation.

He looked her in the eye. The medal dangled from the chain in her hand. It caught a gleam off the florescent light above.

"You don't want me to put it on, do you?" he asked.

"Come now, dear husband. Look, it even matches my gold one. It's lovely."

"Superstition."

She snorted.

"Jewelry."

She tossed it across the room. He raised his hand and caught it in his fingers.

Sam laughed lightly. "I bet Buzz would get a kick out of this. Jewelry, eh?"

He put it around his neck and tucked it under his polo.

She eyed him closely. He scooped up a forkful of noodles.

He looked up.
"Quit staring at me. It means nothing."

"Are you afraid of a little piece of metal?"

"It's not that," he told her. "It's just that I feel like a hypocrite, not believing in it or anything."

"Well, maybe you'll get a miracle."

She came and jumped onto his lap. He almost spilled his noodles. She gave him a long, soy sauce-laced kiss.

"It would be a miracle if I got this spreadsheet done before midnight."

"My, aren't we being workaholics today," she teased, and kissed him again.

They both wondered what had gotten into her.

"Let's go home," she whispered into his ear. "And see what happens in front of that big bay window with a view of Lake Erie."

She gently bit his ear. "I miss you."

"You've been here half the day!"

She shook her head. She raised one eyebrow, holding his gaze. She knew what her
beauty did to him.

He pulled her closer.

"Okay, El-darling. We'll watch a video," he joked. "I'll call Buzz again."

She slapped him on the arm.

"Sure, after the lake, dear. After the lake."

+  +  +

"Was that
Buzz's
car in front of O'Donnell's Tap House?" she asked incredulously as they drove by on the way home.

Sam missed it. He looked in his rearview mirror. It was too dark outside.

"I can't
see it."

"Should we turn around and check?" she asked urgently.

"Naw. It's a strip mall. He's probably at the Laundromat or the pizza joint."

Sam was too young in his marriage to learn to trust a woman's intuition.

"Guess you're right." So was Ellie.

Later, after their time together before the view of the lake, and after Buzz failed to answer his phone for the second time in one day, as Ellie
watched
Roman Holiday,
she couldn't shake from her mind two notions about Buzz.

He's got a laundry in his apartment building.

He never eats out. He can't afford it.

That evening, she again dreamed of the dying knight in tarnished armor.

5

Postulant Regina felt an immense urge to leave the Poor Clares the next morning, Sunday. The urge was a giant cloak around her, suffocating her as she dressed,
mumbled her morning prayers, and prepared for Mass.

Where is my vocation?
she asked herself, alarmed.

She looked inside herself, and found nothing.

A voice kept taunting her:
Leave here, leave here, leave here! You're needed outside. Buzz needs you!